Toxic, Nuclear-Contaminated
Dust Plagues Moab UMTRA Superfund Site

On October 11, 2011, I drove
from
Moab, Utah to Grand Junction, Colorado.
As I approached the Highway 191
Colorado River Bridge, I swung my camera
to the left, and out the side window of my
truck. Having refocused my digital camera, I
started taking a series of "point and shoot"
images. Most of my shots were of the
Moab UMTRAA nuclear cleanup site, better
known as the
Moab Pile.

After
crossing the river, the highway swings south
and then parallels the uranium mill tailing
Superfund site. The Moab UMTRA site is a
well-known emitter of nuclear radiation.
Unknown to many in the area, it is also the
largest dust-hazard in
Grand County, Utah. Nowhere else will
you find both nuclear and chemical waste
exposed to the
regional dust storms that now plague the
Four Corners states.

If I remember correctly, the
wind was relatively calm on October 11,
2011. Having studied the issue for years,
little that I learn about the cleanup of the
old
Atlas Uranium Mill site surprises me.
Still, I did not expect to see the event
that unfolded right outside my window.
There, on the top of the Moab Pile, a dust
devil swirled and lifted a vortex of dust
into the air.

Watch the video "Moab Pile
Nuclear Dust Devil"

As I drove closer, my camera
angle came closer to the sun. As it did, it
captured an image of finer dust particles
expanding above the twister. If you watch
the
YouTube video, you will see one frame in
which that larger dust cloud shows itself in
shades of lavender and violet. Just because
something
is not visible to the unaided eye does not
mean that it may not be there. The Carl
Zeiss lens on my Sony camera sometimes picks
up light in unexpected ways, especially when
it involves
new energy.

Dust rising up from the Moab
Pile, only to dump on the nearby
Colorado River and on Moab is a common
occurrence. During both my August and
October 2011 visits to Moab, I have
photographed large amounts of radioactive
dust escaping from the UMTRA site. If I
remember correctly, the
Department of Energy (DOE) should be
setting reasonable safety standards for the
cleanup. However, toxic, nuclear dust clouds
continue to emanate from the Moab UMTRA site
on a regular basis. Does DOE or
Moab UMTRA care about that?

When
I started traveling to
Moab on a regular basis in 2006, the
Moab Pile once again entered into my
thoughts and
dreams. Although the subject did not receive
much press coverage, that year floods of a size
not seen since 1984 again cut into the Moab
Pile. Throughout its term of office, the George
W.
Busch administration was slow to commit
funds to the cleanup of the imminent hazard.

Once the
Obama administration took over, it allocated
federal stimulus funds to the project. Now, four
years later, the
Moab Pile is smaller by almost one-third.
With current funding curtailed to pre-stimulus
levels, the twenty-five million people now
living downstream will have to wait another six
to twelve years for the complete removal of the
Moab Pile. If ever there was a good case for
increased federal funding, the
Moab UMTRA Project is that case.

1984 -
Spring floods on the Colorado River
blasted up to 66,000 cubic feet [1,870 cubic
meters] per second directly into the Moab
Pile, causing an undocumented release of
contaminated material into the Colorado
River.

1984 - Atlas Corp. ceased
operations at Moab, leaving both the mill
and up to 16 million tons of uranium
tailings and contaminated soil at the site.

1988 - When it became
obvious that the mill would not operate
again, Atlas Corp. began on-site remediation
of the mill and tailings pile.

1995 - Atlas Corp.
crushed the mill and then placed an interim
cover of soil over its remnants and the
tailings pile.

1998 - The NRC appointed
the former accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers as the trustee of the
Moab Mill Reclamation Trust, licensing that
company to initiate site reclamation.

2000 - Congress and
President Bill Clinton approved transfer of
responsibility for the Moab Pile to the
Department of Energy (DOE).

2001 - The DOE accepted
transfer of title for the site, with direct
responsibility going to their office in
Grand Junction, Colorado.

2003 - In order to slow
the migration of ammonia and other
contaminants into the Colorado River, DOE
contractors constructed eight extraction and
more than thirty freshwater injection wells
at the site.

2004 - The DOE Moab
Project Team published a draft plan that
called for moving the contaminated tailings
and decommissioned mill to an offsite
location.

2005 - DOE announced its
preferred disposal site, thirty miles away
in the desert, near
Crescent Junction, Utah.

2006
- Flash flooding cut through layers of sand
that covered the pile, washed out a
containment berm and left a large puddle on
top of the 130-acre Moab Pile.

2007 -
EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City, Utah
received a $98 million contract for removal
and disposal of tailings through 2011.

2008 - In preparation for
removal of material, DOE began
infrastructure improvements at both the Moab
Pile and the
Crescent Junction disposal site.

2008 - The DOE announced
that transportation of tailings to the
disposal site would be by rail, rather than
by truck.

2009 - Stimulus Funds
provided by the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act increased removal activity
to
two trains per day, six days each week.

2010 - In
March,
the Moab UMTRA project reached a milestone,
with over one million tons of tailings
removed from the site.

2010 - In August, the
Moab UMTRA project reaches another
milestone, with over two million tons
removed from the site.

2011 - Just as
stimulus-funding dried up, the Moab UMTRA
project reached another milestone, with over
four million tons removed from the site.

2011 - The
Colorado River overflowed its banks at
the Moab UMTRA site, causing damage to
earthworks and a riverside bicycle path, but
sparing the river from direct contact with
the Moab Pile.

2012 - In a competitive
bidding process,
Portage, Inc. of Idaho Falls, Idaho
displaced EnergySolutions as the prime
contractor for removal of tailings from the
Moab UMTRA site.

2012 - In February, the
Moab UMTRA project reached another
milestone, with over five million tons
removed from the site.

2012 - With commencement
of reduced federal funding, Portage, Inc.
announced a new concept, whereby the annual
contract for removal would switch to a
nine-month schedule, with a three-month
hiatus each winter.

Now,
more than sixty years after Charlie Steen
discovered uranium near Moab, the estimated
completion date for the Moab UMTRA project
ranges from 2019-2025. In 1957, the original
Uranium Reduction Company mill cost $11 million
to build. The current estimated cost to remove
and dispose of the mill and its contaminated
tailings is $1 billion. For that honor, U.S.
taxpayers will shell out almost one hundred
times the original cost of construction.

This week, the two top stories in the
Moab Times Independent newspaper concern the
future of mineral extraction and processing in
that area. In one story, "A controversial
oil sands mining operation proposed for the
Book Cliffs northeast of Moab has cleared its
final state regulation hurdle, allowing it to
become the nation's first such project." In
another, "The
Grand County Council voted unanimously to
send a letter to President Barack Obama opposing
creation of national monument status for 1.4
million acres surrounding
Canyonlands National Park."